HomeDate: 2026-08-04
Dr. Shiuon Chu, Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, has received the 2026 First Book Award from the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) for his book Reinventing Examination and the State in Twentieth-Century China and Taiwan. The award recognises the book’s important and lasting contributions to the histories of education and politics, as well as to the study of public policy and theories of the state.
ISCHE is an international academic organisation dedicated to the study of the history of education, with individual and institutional members from around the world. The First Book Award honours a single-authored academic monograph by a historian of education that represents innovative and exemplary scholarship in the broadly conceived field of the history of education.
Tracing the ideological evolution of civil service examinations and state-organised educational examinations in twentieth-century China and Taiwan, Dr. Chu argues that the authority of examination was by no means a natural continuation of imperial China’s long civil service examination tradition, but rather a product reshaped through specific political processes during the twentieth century. The concept of examination as a fundamental power of government was institutionalised through the establishment of the Examination Yuan in the 1930s and incorporated into the Constitution promulgated in 1947, which remains in effect in Taiwan today. Two models of educational examination—screening school graduates and mobilising human resources—also took shape during the Second World War and became shared educational policy resources on both sides of the Taiwan Strait following the political division of 1949.
Website：
https://www.ische.org/ecr/ische-first-book-award/
https://pse.is/9cuxdk
